


Hunter and Prey

by SanguineInk



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Action, Action/Adventure, Adorable Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV), Adventure, Bounty Hunters, Canon-Typical Violence, Family Bonding, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, ManDadlorian, Mandalorian Parenting, Mando'a, Mind Control, One Shot, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Season/Series 01, Protective, Protectiveness, The Force, baby yoda is a mandalorian now, baby yoda using the force, i mean it's the mandalorian what'd you expect, some violence, teaching baby yoda to be a mandalorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-24
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:47:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22392763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SanguineInk/pseuds/SanguineInk
Summary: “When one chooses to walk the way of the Mandalore, you are both hunter and prey.”Din and his foundling, on a dark and stormy night, face dangers known and unknown. (Or, a blatant excuse to write some action scenes and Mandalorian-style parenting.)
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 19
Kudos: 342





	Hunter and Prey

**Author's Note:**

> This is post-season 1.

Din woke up in the middle of the night to a tiny fist knocking on his visor. He opened his eyes to see his foundling, perched on his beskar-covered chest and leaning over his helmet, and decidedly not in the cocoon of pillows and blankets Din had made for the little womp rat before going to bed himself. 

Fighting back a yawn, Din carefully sat up, one hand moving to keep the child from slipping down his chestplate. He was still wearing his full armor, helmet and all. Sleeping in his beskar was never the most comfortable, but he still did it when he was sleeping in a place like this, in the basement of a cantina on a mid-rim planet where one of the drunken occupants from upstairs might wander in. Din and the child had spent two days on this planet so far, making inquiries about the rumors of a possible jedi living here. The search had been long and tiring and fruitless, so Din had gotten the room early before the evening crowd arrived and intended to leave for the ship early in the morning. Hopefully few people even realized a Mandalorian, or his highly valuable foundling, was here.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Din guessed groggily. He took in the child’s wide eyes, the way his ears bent low and close to his head, and realized that his claws were now digging into the armor weave at the edge of Din’s beskar. “Nightmare?”

The child shook his head fervently, and Din tensed. Something else, then. This was not the first time his foundling had been scared by something Din had not yet sensed, and it would probably not be the last. And Din had long since learned that when his foundling sensed something scary, enemies were usually not too far away.

Time to leave, then. The _Razor Crest_ was hidden in the woods a half-day’s walk away from the town, which was why Din had decided to sleep here and make for the ship in the morning. But if the child sensed danger, it would be better to brave the many-taloned beasts and slicing winds of this planet’s wilderness, not to mention the other potential hostiles in this town, than to stay here. At the very least, they should move to another building and stay alert.

“Alright, _adi’ka_ , thanks for the warning, you did good,” he said soothingly, patting the clinging child’s back. At Din’s voice, the foundling’s fear melted away from his wrinkled face, and he let go of Din’s armor and allowed himself to be wrapped in the blanket that Din used for a sling.

Din quickly strapped the sling around his chest and retrieved his weapons from next to the bed, uneasy at the quiet. The foundling often protested being put in the sling, much preferring to toddle alongside his _buir_ instead, but this time he had not even made a complaining whine. Whatever he sensed, it was either very bad or very close by, or both.

Belongings and foundling gathered, Din stepped toward the door. He hesitated a moment, then adjusted the sling around so that the child was safely tucked under his cape, not visible except for a bulge between his shoulder blades and (hopefully) harder to detect in the cape’s fluttering.

"Stay down, okay?" Din said in a cross between a plea and an order. The kid had gotten better at staying out of sight when there was danger, but he still liked to poke his head out the top of Din’s cape to look around.

Din heard an answering chirp, and took that as an affirmative. He pulled out his blaster, and cautiously nudged the door to his room open. 

Nothing. No one was there. There was no change in the noise level from upstairs. Still, Din did not relax. His own instincts, honed from years of bounty hunting and even more years of Mandalorian training, were prickling, sensing the same thing the foundling probably did. A feeling like unseen eyes seeking him out, like a trap slowly being sprung.

He met no one in the hallway or on the stairs up to the main cantina. The buzz of a dozen languages and jaunty music grew louder as he slunk his way through the doorway into the crowded area, blaster held loosely at his side as he made his way toward the exit as casually as possible. A couple of people glanced at his beskar. Across the room, the bartender who had given Din the room was shaking his head at a frustrated Weequay.

Din sensed movement from two figures that had been on either side of the stairs but didn't turn his head to look behind him. They were matching his pace and direction. They'd likely wait to ambush him once he was outside.

Or maybe not. A very tall Zygerrian had suddenly risen from her seat near the door to stand in front of it, smirking and crossing her arms expectantly. 

Path blocked, Din was forced to stop in the middle of the room. The two behind him were closing in. All three seemed to be hesitating. No, waiting for something. Din widened his stance and cocked his head at the Zygerrian in a clearly broadcasted threat, while beneath the helmet his eyes darted around, scanning for cover and calculating the distance to the nearest jump-through-able window.

And then the Weequay drunkenly lurched into Din’s side and grabbed the Mandalorian’s shoulder to keep himself falling to the floor. “Eyyyy, Mannndo…”

Din jammed his blaster into the Weequay’s neck. At the same moment, Din felt another blaster poke between the beskar plates near his stomach. The Weequay grinned back at him, drunkenness suddenly gone. 

The buzz of conversation started to slow as patrons sensed an impending confrontation and started to flip over tables for cover. The bartender started a blustering protest, but seemed to think better of it and ducked behind the bar. The Zygerrian at the door pulled out a whip with a pulsing red tail. Din heard two more people behind him stepping closer, and the click of them drawing weapons. From under his cape, he heard a questioning rumble as the child shifted in the sling.

The Weequay pressed his blaster a bit further into Din’s side. “Don’t mo—”

Din didn’t let him finish; he had already grabbed the Weequay’s blaster arm and yanked, pulling the Weequay into the path of the Zygerrian’s whip. The Weequay took the blow across the face, and his startled shot hit beskar as Din spun, shooting at the Zygerrian with his own blaster and flinging the Weequay into the two people—blue Twi'lek and dark-haired human—behind him. The Weequay slammed into his companions, his blaster-resistant skin taking their blaster fire in Din’s place as all three tumbled to the ground. Din’s own blaster shots hit the Zygerrian in the arm, chest, and head, and she toppled, unarmed and unmoving. 

Din spun to face the knocked-over Twi'lek and human. The human had already ducked from beneath the Weequay and dived behind one of the tables turned over for cover. The Twi'lek was still on the ground, shoving the dazed Weequay off himself and scrambling to grab his dropped blaster. Din shot a clean hole through his head before he could reach it.

The human emerged from behind cover with what Din immediately and unfortunately recognized as a decommissioned Mark II Heavy ARC-5 pulse rifle. Din dashed towards the bar as she fired. The first shots just barely missed, each one scorching a foot-wide crater in the floor and wall behind him and punching holes in his cape as he ran. Din vaulted over the bar’s counter and twisted in mid-air just in time to catch the fifth shot in the chest rather than the back, where his foundling was. He landed hard on his side next to an indignant bartender, with a yelp from his foundling and a pained grunt of his own.

Gasping, Din looked down at his chestplate and the carbon scoring covering it. The beskar had held up wonderfully; the sling that held his foundling, however, had not. It was still wrapped around his probably-bruised chest, but the blast had seared through most of the fabric so that one good tug would make the whole thing fall apart. Din frantically spun it around and took the child out, relieved when the foundling beamed back up at him, bemused but unharmed and ears twitching in curiosity as he took in their surroundings. Din snatched the necks of two bottles of spicebrew off a shelf built into the back of the bar’s counter and set the child down in the now-vacant space instead. 

“Hey!” the bartender objected before Din whirled on him, leveling his best glare through his visor. The bartender got the message and huffed, but put his claws up, sufficiently cowed.

Din cast one more look at his foundling, settled safely amongst an assortment of bottled drinks taller than he was. The child was staring at his own warped reflection in one of the bottles with awed wonder. Satisfied, Din took a deep breath and pulled the vibroblade out of his boot.

He sprung out from behind the bar to see what he’d expected—in the absence of return fire, the human woman had emerged from behind her cover, rifle primed as she crept closer to Din’s location. Din chucked one of the bottles at her head, then the other one at the spot he expected her to dodge to. She twisted expertly to avoid both and brought her rifle to bear on him, but it was too late; the bottles had bought him enough time to get in close, grab hold of the rifle’s barrel, and sink his vibroblade into her chest. 

He pulled the rifle out of her hands and the vibroblade out of her chest as she collapsed. Then he looked around, finally locating the Weequay. Evidently, the Weequay had observed what happened to the others and decided to retreat; he was half-crawling, half-running for the door. 

Din stuck the vibroblade back into his boot and shot out his grappling cable, snagging the Weequay’s leg. The Weequay slammed onto his knees as Din leisurely reeled him back in. Panicked, the Weequay spun around, blaster in hand. His only shot went wide before Din stomped on his blaster arm a bit harder than necessary and pointed the ARC-5 rifle at his chest.

The Weequay flailed beneath Din’s boot, free hand waving in front of his face. “Whoa, whoa, hey, hey! Listen, Mando, listen, I can make you a deal!”

Din paused, then put more weight on the foot crushing the Weequay’s blaster arm.

The Weequay cringed, but pushed on. “Listen, _listen_ —ow—we can help each other, okay? I’m not actually here for you! I’m here for the kid. We could team up, split the re—”

Din fired, then let the spent rifle drop. He freed his grappling cable from the body, and the cable rolled back into his vambrace with a snap. Then he turned slightly, surveying the rest of the cantina, silently daring anyone else to try something.

Wisely, no one did.

After a few moments, chatter started back up as cantina patrons emerged from behind their cover and righted their tables. One of them looked over the carnage and whistled, impressed. 

Din bent down and inspected each body, retrieving a bag or pouch full of credits from each one. Three of them had fobs for the kid, but the Zygerrian had a puck. Din flicked it on briefly to see an approximation of his own helmet looking back at him. The info was sparse, and the price on his head wasn’t high enough to attract any big names yet. He sucked in a relieved breath before he crushed fobs and puck. Greef Karga may have called the Guild off, but that hadn’t stopped the Imperials from hiring non-guild hunters who were dumb enough or desperate enough to try their luck. Still, after enough failures, the price would go up. He’d need to be ready.

By the time Din returned to the bar, the cantina was buzzing again. The bartender gingerly placed the child atop the counter and stepped back respectfully. The child’s ears perked as Din approached, and he lifted his stubby arms up and wiggled grabby fingers.

“I didn’t tell them you were here,” the bartender said quickly.

Din considered the man for a moment before finally scooping up his foundling and placing one of the bags of credits on the counter in his place. 

The bartender pocketed the bag, then looked at the bodies and back at Din. “And I’ve never seen you or your kid in my life. Provided you get out. Now.”

Din nodded. He had no intention of staying anyway. His foundling trilled contentedly as Din carried him through the exit and out into the street.

The night was starting to creep into early morning, although sunrise was still hours away. The streets were lit only by bulbous flickering lanterns hung high above the few people still populating the streets. Din kept an eye on any who happened to wander too close. The chilled air hung heavy with the threat of rain, and Din wrapped the remains of the sling around his foundling.

“Looks like we need to get you a new _birikad_ ,” Din announced. The foundling nodded sleepily. Din wondered, for perhaps the millionth time, how much the child actually understood.

“Next planet, we’ll get some supplies,” Din continued. “New _birikad_ , more rifle ammo, more fuel, maybe something better than ration bars. And if we’re lucky, someone else might have better intel about your sorcerer people, since this planet didn’t work out.”

The child yawned and snuggled further into his elbow, and Din thought longingly of his bed on the _Razor Crest_ , and the many hours that still stood between him and a beskar-free sleep.

“At least we got some credits out of this trip,” Din continued as the child blinked slowly back up at him. “So it wasn’t a complete waste. I hope the Imps pay all their hunters a nice advance from now on. I won’t need to find work for a while.” Din considered the credits for a moment. “Maybe we can hire a speeder to get us back faster. How does that sound?”

The child mumbled, eyes closed. Din smiled beneath his helmet and kept walking, bouncing the kid just a bit to lull him into full sleep.

The foundling had been asleep for a few minutes when Din heard the slightest sound of a footstep on pavement and felt a prickle on the back of his neck. He didn’t break stride, but turned around a bit as if to adjust his cape, and peeked out of the corner of his visor to see a shadowed figure about twenty paces behind them.

Din turned down the next left junction, and then left again at the next. The shadowed figure was still following, fifteen paces behind now instead of twenty. Din weighed the risks and benefits of finding a safe spot to stash the kid versus fighting one-handed. He was still mulling it over and looking for a good spot to launch an ambush on his stalker when the child’s ears twitched violently, and his big eyes flashed open, suddenly very awake. 

“It’s okay,” Din murmured back quietly, “ _Shhh_.” But his foundling did not calm. His tiny, wrinkled head swiveled as if looking for the source of a noise. 

Din abruptly realized he had lost track of the figure behind him. He tightened his grip on his distressed foundling and rested his other hand on his blaster.

“Mandalorian,” came a voice from his left. Din turned toward the voice and drew his blaster in one fluid motion.

A Zabrakian woman emerged from the shadows, her green skin shimmering in the faint light. “I do not wish to fight, Mandalorian. I’ve been looking for you. I hear you seek a jedi.”

“You heard right,” said Din warily, lowering his blaster but not putting it away. His foundling was gaping at her, entranced. Din wasn’t yet sure if that was a good thing.

“I can help you.”

“You’re a jedi?”

“Not exactly...but I know of them.” She began to circle Din, and seemed to glide more than step a bit closer. 

“Yeah? Then what are you?”

“..A wielder of the Force. Apprentice of the dead Inquisition. And I sense...ah.” 

She zeroed in on the foundling, and her eyes gleamed with a hunger Din had seen before, on too many faces, and directed at his foundling too many times. He angled his body to shield the child a bit more from view. The kid’s eyes stayed fixed on her, his brow furrowing.

“The Force?” 

“Yes. The child...it has it too. It is small, green, like the old one my master once spoke of...Yes, I’ve heard of this one.” Her gaze didn’t move from the child. The foundling glared back almost defiantly. 

Din kept his voice measured. “And what exactly have you heard?”

“Many things. Including what a... _valuable_ apprentice this one might turn out to be.”

She reached out a hand toward the foundling, and the child shrunk back from her, and Din decided that was enough. He cradled his foundling closer to his chest and aimed his blaster at her face. 

“Don’t try it.”

She smiled, raising her hands placatingly. “Worry not, Mandalorian. I have no intention of trying anything.”

Din did not lower his blaster. He didn’t see any weapons, but her unworried demeanor told him that she was still somehow armed, or possibly had friends. Without turning his head, he scanned the edges of his vision for other attackers and for a good escape route if more appeared. The twisting alley on the right looked promising.

“After all…” the Zabrakian continued, still smiling, gesturing grandly. “ _You don’t want to hurt me._ ”

Din lowered his blaster. He wasn’t sure why he’d had it up. His brain suddenly felt very fuzzy.

Her smile widened. “ _You will come with me._ ”

“I’ll come with you,” Din repeated. That suddenly sounded much less risky than chancing the alley. The child gave an alarmed shriek.

The woman’s nose wrinkled. “ _You will keep that thing quiet_.”

Din holstered his blaster and pressed the child to his shoulder, patting its back softly. “ _K’uur_ , _ad’ika_ , _shhh_...”

The child shook his head in disbelief, ears flicking intently as he looked between Din and the Zabrakian, but his cries soon morphed to scared sniffles.

The Zabrakian snorted. “Adorable. Come on.”

Din followed behind her, rubbing small circles into his foundling’s back and trying to figure out what was making the kid so fussy. He kept wriggling and crying and putting his hands up to Din’s helmet, no matter how many soothing words Din murmured. Something in Din’s chest ached. The child was clearly scared, maybe from the events of the night or possibly just of the planet in general. Din didn’t like this planet either. He wanted to get off of it as soon as possible. And they would as soon as...as soon as…

His thoughts halted there.

He walked in a sort of mindless haze until he slowly became aware that they were in front of a ship. Not the _Razor Crest_ , Din realized. A much newer design, sleeker and smaller, built for speed rather than weaponry and maneuverability like the _Crest_. The ship’s platform lowered, and the woman took a step onto it, then paused.

His ship could take this ship in a firefight if it needed to, Din decided with satisfaction. Then he wondered why it mattered.

For a quick moment, alarm bells pierced the cloud in Din’s head. What was he doing here, out in the open, nowhere near his ship or any kind of cover? There was danger near, the child could sense it, _he_ could sense it, he needed to move, he needed to fight, he needed to get his foundling out of here—

The Zabrakian looked back at him, smiled sweetly, and gave a flourishy wave. “Perfect. Now, _you will give me the child._ ”

It was pretty cold out here, especially since it had started to rain. Din carefully adjusted the child’s blanket so it wouldn’t flap open and expose him to the elements. It was a difficult task; the child was squirming and shrieking again. Din frowned beneath his helmet and ran his thumb gently over the child’s tear-stained cheek. Something was very wrong, but Din couldn’t figure out what. The inside of his head buzzed like a building thunderstorm.

The woman waved again, then reached out a hand, curling and uncurling her fingers in demand. “ _You will give me the child without dawdling._ ”

Din reluctantly held out his foundling. His throat felt tight, and the weird fog in his head was making him feel light-headed and dizzy, like he’d been concussed. Had he been concussed?

He felt like his lungs were seizing as his foundling’s warm weight was removed from his arms. The Zabrakian took a fistful of the child’s robe and blanket and held him out at arm’s length. Her lip curled in a sneer for a moment before waving again at Din.

“Good. Now _you will wait until my ship is in the air_.”

“I will wait until your ship is in the air,” Din choked out, unable to tear his gaze away from his foundling, dangling from the woman’s grip and staring back at him with wide, uncertain eyes.

“ _And then you will shoot yourself in the head._ ”

Numbly, Din took out his blaster and lifted it to his chin.

The child _screamed_. His claws reached out, not towards Din, but towards the woman holding him. His tiny face scrunched up in fury.

The Zabrakian’s smile vanished with a sudden gurgle. The child dropped from her grasp as she clutched at her own choking throat.

Din dived to catch his foundling, stumbling as sheer, unadulterated panic abruptly surged through every muscle. He snatched the child back up to his chest and _ran_ , shooting blindly behind him with the blaster he barely remembered drawing. He didn’t even care where he went, just as long as it was away from that witch and whatever she had done to him—what the _kriff_ was she, what had he almost done, how did he fight this, what kind of strategy could ever work against something that slipped past the armor into his own brain—

An invisible something yanked him up. Din started to slide back toward the enemy, his toes skimming the ground. The child wailed in his arms.

“Hold on!” Din told him, and thrashed until he had twisted to face the woman, who was clawing at the air as if tugging a rope, her chest heaving and face screwed up in rage. 

Din fired at her head, but a quick shove of her other hand and the shots deflected off nothing. She yanked until he was two arms’ length away from her, and he could feel nothing but the child’s trembling form clinging to his chestplate and a sudden, invisible vise crushing his windpipe. The edges of his vision started to go dark, but he made out the blurry outline of her arm waving past his eyes again. “ _You will_ —”

Din emptied his flamethrower into her face, and her snarl morphed to a scream. He twisted to land on his back instead of on top of the child as gravity took hold again, but his arm stayed steadily pointing at the woman as she too, collapsed to the ground, screeching. The moment the flamethrower started to sputter, Din snatched his blaster from where it had dropped and started shooting instead.

Again. Again. And again for good measure. The Zabrakian had long since stopped moving, and Din continued to shoot. 

The woman was not much more than charred paste when Din finally let his arm drop back down. He lay there for a moment, breathing hard as the light rain splattered on his helmet. He finally propped himself up on one elbow and focused on the child now pressed to his collarbone, head tucked under his chin.

“Are you alright?”

His foundling peeked up at him and trilled, eyes wide with concern. He pressed both tiny hands onto Din’s helmet.

“I’m okay,” Din answered the unspoken question. “I am so sorry, I don’t—” His voice cracked as he remembered an empty metal pod left in a dumpster on Nevarro, thought of how close he had come to that moment again. “I’d _never_ —”

The foundling cooed in apparent understanding, and Din got the sense that he was forgiven, that the child did not even perceive a betrayal. Instead the foundling looked back at the remains of the woman, then back at his _buir_ , ears drooping.

“She won’t bother us again,” Din reassured the kid as he adjusted his hold and shoved himself back to his feet. He kicked at the Zabrakian’s remains, and ashes flaked off on his boot. The child’s ears pressed flatter against his head, and he babbled guiltily, pointing back at the body and himself.

“No, no!” said Din, patting his foundling’s head. “ _Oya._ You did good, ad’ika. This isn’t like Cara. This person, she was _not_ a friend; she was an enemy. And we are Mandalorians. We fight our enemies, with everything we have. Sorcery included. And you fought well.”

The child’s ears perked up, and he nodded solemnly, babbling something that sounded like “Ooaah.”

A wave of emotion swelled in Din’s chest, some weird mix of pride and relief and a smothering need to protect. His voice came out thicker than he meant it to as he squeezed his foundling a little tighter. “That’s right. _Oya_.”

“Oooyah,” the child tried to repeat.

The Mandalorian cleared his throat and looked at the Zabrakian’s ship. That would get them back to the _Razor Crest_ nicely, and he could probably strip a few spare parts off it as well. This really had, despite everything, been a profitable trip. "Now, what do you say we get off this planet?"

The child squealed in agreement. 

Two minutes later, a ship darted through the night sky toward the forest, unnoticed by any others. Neither passenger looked back.

**Author's Note:**

> adi'ka - child  
> buir - parent  
> birikad - child carrier  
> k'uur - hush  
> Oya - Many meanings: literally *Let's hunt!* and also *Stay alive!*, but also *Hoorah!*, *Go you!*, *Cheers!* Always positive and triumphant.


End file.
